Ought Six
Membership Revoked
You can easily create a food supply in your back yard, even in the city. First, dig as large a pond as you think you can have in your location. For a smaller pond, use a plastic liner, and for a larger one, go to a supplier and ask for damaged bags of concrete at a discount. If the cement bags have gotten damp have started to harden up, you can get them for next to nothing. Throw them in the pond you dug, and break up the bags & clumps with a hoe. Spread aggregate over the concrete, spray it a little with a hose, and mix it right in with the dirt, making dirt-mix concrete, and smooth it out and let it dry.
Fill the pond, and add water plants in pots, especially edible ones like cattails. Pot them in plastic nursery pots with soilless mix, and cover the top with heavy gravel to keep the soil in the pot, then just place them in the pond. Some large smooth rocks, piled up together to make islands will be good places for small fry & crawdads to hide, and the frogs to sun themselves. Put in a decorative waterfall or fountain to aereate the water.
Stock the pond with catfish (unless you are in a colder climate, then you need to choose another species). They're tasty, they grow fast, and they're darn near impossible to kill. Add water snails and crawdads to help keep the water clean. Also, get bullfrogs for frog legs. Fence in the pond with chicken wire and get ducks and/or geese, if zoning allows it. Keep in mind geese are very noisy, which is bad in a city backyard, but good in a rural area. Geese can take on many predators themselves, and will sound the alarm better than a dog if intruders approach. Also, duck or geese cr@p will permanently seal the bottom of the pond.
Now, for the real heart of the system. You have to run power out to the pond anyways for the water feature pump (make sure it's a ground fault interruper-protected {GFI} circuit). Get a couple heavy-duty bug zappers and remove the water pan that catches the bugs on the bottom. Hang the zappers out over the water on poles. Tie a scrap of bacon dangling just underneath the zapper with dental floss to draw flies during the day, and the light will draw them after dark. This is your feeder system. Every time a bug gets zapped, it drops into the water, and the ducks, frogs or catfish will get it. You won't have to buy food for these animals or fish, it's free, except during cold winter months. Also, your bug problems will be greatly diminished. If you place the pond near your veggie garden, many of the bad bugs will be drawn to the pond, to become food for your pod livestock, instead of eating your veggies. If you arrainge it artistically, you can even make a nice piece of frontyard landscaping out of the project. Just make sure your fence is good enough to keep out neighborhood dogs. For a smaller pond with no waterfowl, you can make a hinged frame with 6" square wire fencing material as a cover. That will keep the racoons out, but still let the zapped bugs drop through. One person told me they are going to do this with an old fiberglass jacuzzi tub set flush into the ground. If you live in a colder climate, you may have to harvest the fish or feed them with fish food during colder months when there are no flying bugs about.
A couple tips. First, when the ducks begin nesting, run a net through the pond and harvest all the catfish. Call your buddies and tell them to bring beer and their fillet knives over, and have a catfish fry. Save some of your catfish in a seperate container (a barrel or horse trough will work fine) for breeding stock. Large catfish will eat young ducklings, and thus must be harvested before the ducklings hatch. Second, muck out your pond once a year with buckets and plastic scoops, being very careful not to damage the pond liner. This must be done, or the pond will eventually fill in. This muck is rich liquid compost, black gold for your vegetable garden.
So once you set this up, you will get fish, duck and/or geese, eggs, down, feathers, frog legs, crawdads, edible water plants and compost for your garden, as well as insect pest control, and maybe even an extra intruder alarm. The maintenece is very low, the costs are only the tiny amount of electricity to run the pump & zappers, and you have an attractive water feature that will raise the value of your property.
Is that cool, or what ?!?
Fill the pond, and add water plants in pots, especially edible ones like cattails. Pot them in plastic nursery pots with soilless mix, and cover the top with heavy gravel to keep the soil in the pot, then just place them in the pond. Some large smooth rocks, piled up together to make islands will be good places for small fry & crawdads to hide, and the frogs to sun themselves. Put in a decorative waterfall or fountain to aereate the water.
Stock the pond with catfish (unless you are in a colder climate, then you need to choose another species). They're tasty, they grow fast, and they're darn near impossible to kill. Add water snails and crawdads to help keep the water clean. Also, get bullfrogs for frog legs. Fence in the pond with chicken wire and get ducks and/or geese, if zoning allows it. Keep in mind geese are very noisy, which is bad in a city backyard, but good in a rural area. Geese can take on many predators themselves, and will sound the alarm better than a dog if intruders approach. Also, duck or geese cr@p will permanently seal the bottom of the pond.
Now, for the real heart of the system. You have to run power out to the pond anyways for the water feature pump (make sure it's a ground fault interruper-protected {GFI} circuit). Get a couple heavy-duty bug zappers and remove the water pan that catches the bugs on the bottom. Hang the zappers out over the water on poles. Tie a scrap of bacon dangling just underneath the zapper with dental floss to draw flies during the day, and the light will draw them after dark. This is your feeder system. Every time a bug gets zapped, it drops into the water, and the ducks, frogs or catfish will get it. You won't have to buy food for these animals or fish, it's free, except during cold winter months. Also, your bug problems will be greatly diminished. If you place the pond near your veggie garden, many of the bad bugs will be drawn to the pond, to become food for your pod livestock, instead of eating your veggies. If you arrainge it artistically, you can even make a nice piece of frontyard landscaping out of the project. Just make sure your fence is good enough to keep out neighborhood dogs. For a smaller pond with no waterfowl, you can make a hinged frame with 6" square wire fencing material as a cover. That will keep the racoons out, but still let the zapped bugs drop through. One person told me they are going to do this with an old fiberglass jacuzzi tub set flush into the ground. If you live in a colder climate, you may have to harvest the fish or feed them with fish food during colder months when there are no flying bugs about.
A couple tips. First, when the ducks begin nesting, run a net through the pond and harvest all the catfish. Call your buddies and tell them to bring beer and their fillet knives over, and have a catfish fry. Save some of your catfish in a seperate container (a barrel or horse trough will work fine) for breeding stock. Large catfish will eat young ducklings, and thus must be harvested before the ducklings hatch. Second, muck out your pond once a year with buckets and plastic scoops, being very careful not to damage the pond liner. This must be done, or the pond will eventually fill in. This muck is rich liquid compost, black gold for your vegetable garden.
So once you set this up, you will get fish, duck and/or geese, eggs, down, feathers, frog legs, crawdads, edible water plants and compost for your garden, as well as insect pest control, and maybe even an extra intruder alarm. The maintenece is very low, the costs are only the tiny amount of electricity to run the pump & zappers, and you have an attractive water feature that will raise the value of your property.
Is that cool, or what ?!?
